Tag: crisis

USED

Global Scenes

How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans From Tehran Joshuah Bearman Magazine Date of Publication: 04.24.07. 04.24.07 Time of Publication: 2:00 am.
2:00 am wired.com“..He’d become Kevin Costa Harkins, an Irish film producer leading his preproduction crew through Iran to do some location scouting for a big-budget Hollywood epic. Mendez had contacts in Hollywood from past collaborations. (After all, they were in the same business of creating false realities.) And it wouldn’t be surprising, Mendez thought, that a handful of eccentrics from Tinseltown might be oblivious to the political situation in revolutionary Iran. The Iranian government, incredibly, was trying to encourage international business in the country. They needed the hard currency, and a film production could mean millions of US dollars…”

How the War Party Sold the 1991 Bombing of Iraq to US by Mitchel Cohen December 30, 2002 antiwar.com“..In October, 1990, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, identified only as Nayirah, appeared in Washington before the House of Representatives’ Human Rights Caucus. She testified that Iraqi soldiers who had invaded Kuwait on August 2nd tore hundreds of babies from hospital incubators and killed them.

Television flashed her testimony around the world. It electrified opposition to Iraq’s president, Saddam Hussein, who was now portrayed by U.S. president George Bush not only as “the Butcher of Baghdad” but – so much for old friends – “a tyrant worse than Hitler.”

Bush quoted Nayirah at every opportunity. Six times in one month he referred to “312 premature babies at Kuwait City’s maternity hospital who died after Iraqi soldiers stole their incubators and left the infants on the floor,”(1) and of “babies pulled from incubators and scattered like firewood across the floor.” Bush used Nayirah’s testimony to lambaste Senate Democrats still supporting “only” sanctions against Iraq – the blockade of trade which alone would cause hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to die of hunger and disease – but who waffled on endorsing the policy Bush wanted to implement: outright bombardment. Republicans and pro-war Democrats used Nayirah’s tale to hammer their fellow politicians into line behind Bush’s war in the Persian Gulf.(2)

Nayirah, though, was no impartial eyewitness, a fact carefully concealed by her handlers. She was the daughter of one Saud Nasir Al-Sabah, Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States. A few key Congressional leaders and reporters knew who Nayirah was, but none of them thought of sharing that minor detail with Congress, let alone the American people.

Everything Nayirah said, as it turned out, was a lie. There were, in actuality, only a handful of incubators in all of Kuwait, certainly not the “hundreds” she claimed…”

Those with little experience of the febrile world of conspiracy theory may not fully understand what Hogg is being accused of. But the idea that mass shooting victims and witnesses are hired performers serving a dark purpose has over the last decade migrated from the farthest margins of conspiracy media…”

What are you going to “do” now? What are your plans after graduation? What’s next? These are just some of the many questions graduates (and even non-graduates too) ponder as they are frequently bombarded with by family members, friends, etc.. I “graduated” from college almost 19+ years ago and sometimes “ponder” some of these questions too. However, as one gets “older”, we tend to find more of that “purposeful life” as we grow (hopefully most of us) in “wisdom”. I decided to do this blog topic to “encourage” those in similar boats..

If you just recently graduated…congratulations!

You deserve the recognition and accolades! It’s a big accomplishment! I current and have been working with “high school dropouts” in getting their G.E.D. or high school diploma. One of my oldest student was in her 50’s! It’s not that easy for many due to the various different “life challenges” and circumstances each person faces. In fact, this leads to one possible idea on what to do “next”! Pay it forward, help (e.g. volunteer) someone in your local community (e.g. community ed) get their G.E.D. You know something that many people don’t and you can share that knowledge with others. This brings up to this video I recently found as a great start in that “journey” in finding that “purpose in life”..

Who YOU are?
1-What’s your #name (what does it mean)?
2-What are you “good” (#talents #skills) at?

OTHER people
3-Who do you do it for (How do you #serve them?)?
4-What do they want you #need (How can you #help people?)?
5-How do they #change or #transform what you give them? (#makeadifference) ?

#lifepurpose

#happypeople make other #happy

Did you find answers to all the questions above? Good! You are already on your way to a finding answers that many people my age or older don’t know already. I encourage you to share these answers with as many family members and close love ones. They might build on these answer and help direct you to the many questions you pondered earlier mentioned above or beginning of this blog.

Best Graduation Speeches for that “Next Step”

The Valedictorian Speech that will change your life

“..
A speech of a lifetime and life itself comedically written and presented by Valedictorian Carl Aquino, a 2010 graduate from West Hall High School. He humorously relates the four years of high school to a rubix cube with some music in the background…”

Sal: Don’t forget to look back at times (e.g. difficult seasons) to reflect on the “accomplishments” you made!

The Most Inspiring Speech: The Wisdom of a Third Grade Dropout Will Change Your Life | Rick Rigsby

”
Goalcast
Published on Oct 5, 2017
Make an Impact: Rick Rigsby delivers a powerful speech on how his father’s teachings have guided him through the most troubling times of his life. Are you Inspired? Order Dr. Rick Rigsby’s book, “Lessons from a third grade dropout” here: http://amzn.to/2fXHZV1

WATCH THIS EVERY DAY – Motivational Speech By Navy Seal Admiral William H. McRaven

Still need guidance..daily? Personally ask God (“Creator”) yourself! I got this from this book called-“Purposeful Driven Life” by Rick Warren..

Ever been to an art museum and trying to figure out what a unique painting or sculpture is about? Well, if the “creator” or “artist” was there, would it be easier to find the answer if you ask them for yourself. That goes with a song you wonder what it’s “meaning” was about too.

Victims

What you need to know about the FBI tip-line that failed in the Florida shooting Author: Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY Published: 6:11 PM EST February 19, 2018 kare11.com
Until last week, the FBI’s tip-line call center had been operating in near-anonymity from its hub in rural West Virginia.“..Nearly 4 million telephone calls and emails have poured into the so-called Public Access Line since the operations were consolidated six years ago.

The program, which grew out of the FBI’s effort to combat massive fraud spawned by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, was aimed at centralizing separate call centers that had been functioning at all 56 field offices across the country – freeing up more agents to work the streets in divisions across the country.

In wake of the tip-line’s breakdown in the Cruz case, it is now the focus of an internal FBI review. Lawmakers, meanwhile, have called for congressional inquiries and President Trump offered his own rebuke in a weekend tweet, saying that the FBI was “spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion.”

Here, we break down everything you need to know about the tip-line.

How are tips routed to the FBI public access line?

Typically, calls of all kinds are received at local FBI field offices across the country where they are sorted by topic.

Those with leads on potential crimes or threats to public safety are transferred to the call center located at the FBI’s offices in Clarksburg, W.Va., the same location that houses the National Instant Criminal Background Check System that reviews the backgrounds of gun purchasers…”

On Wednesday February 14th, 2018 at approximately 2:30pm, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people and wounding thirteen survivors – including two people who remain in critical condition.

The suspect was reportedly armed with an AR-15 style rifle, “countless magazines” of ammunition, a gas mask and even smoke grenades – as he set off a fire alarm and brought students out from their classrooms and into the school hallways prior to the shooting.

Cruz was apprehended on Wednesday and charged on Thursday with 17 counts of premeditated murder in the third-deadliest school shooting in American history.

Florida state Rep. Shawn Harrison said he was “appalled” by the comments made by his district secretary, Benjamin Kelly, earlier in the day and supported a decision to have him terminated.

Harrison also apologized for “any pain this has caused” to families of the victims in last week’s mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where a former student allegedly shot and killed 17 students and teachers…”

CRISIS ACTORS

It’s all THEATER: Florida high school shooting survivor caught on video rehearsing scripted lines, coached by camera man Monday, February 19, 2018 by: Mike Adams naturalnews.com“(Natural News) Is anyone surprised anymore at the depths of deception invoked by the fake news media? All weekend long, the media paraded high school kids in front of news cameras, exploiting them as props for the emotional exploitation of the public. Now it turns out these kids were coached to repeat scripted lines, just like actors reading lines for a movie production. It’s all scripted, in other words, to push a gun control narrative rooted in emotional reaction rather than constructive solutions…

It also turns out that one of these kids — David Hogg — is the son of an FBI agent. In other words, his father was part of the same deep state swamp that has been committing treason to try to destroy Trump. This was almost never mentioned in any of the TV news interviews where he was vehemently defending the FBI and blaming President Trump for the shooting…

Why would the child of an FBI agent be used as a pawn for anti-Trump rhetoric and anti-gun legislation? Because the FBI is only looking to curb OUR Constitutional rights and INCREASE their power. We’ve seen their propaganda many times. Don’t let them win.

Read more coverage at The Gateway Pundit.
..

Curt Schilling is peddling conspiracy theories surrounding the Parkland shooting Big League Stew Mark Townsend,Big League Stew 13 hours ago (2.25.18) yahoo.com“..That was the case again on Saturday, when Schilling angered the masses by retweeting a conspiracy theory that alleges one of the survivors from the mass shooting at Majory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. was actually a paid crisis actor.

The student, 17-year-old David Hogg, has been one of the strongest voices in the aftermath of the shooting that claimed 17 lives and left several others wounded. Those attempting to discredit his story claim Hogg has been coached by his father, a former FBI agent, or that he’s been paid to travel to different shooting sites to support stricter gun laws…”

False Flag

Here’s why the Florida high school mass shooting was a false flag black operation By Editor — February 15, 2018 8 Comments theeventchronicle.com“KEY POINT: That a high school was selected in President Trump’s own back yard in South Florida makes it very difficult for him to avoid the highly politicized parental backlash that is sure to manifest. The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida is less than 40 miles south of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago luxury resort that functions as Trump’s Camp David. How convenient for the perps to have shot up a school located in Broward County, perhaps the most ultra-liberal county south of the border. Clearly, every single detail of this [SHOCKING] mass shooting was well thought out in advance in order to have maximum impact. And so it has! But not without serious blowback on the Deep State decision-makers.”

California flooding has exposed gold veins hidden for 200 years
By Michael Harthorne Published March 14, 2017 Newser foxnews.com“..According to CBS San Francisco, the floods also swept gold out of abandoned mines and washed it downriver. While KCRA reports that gold can simply be picked off the ground following major flooding, the best prospecting will come in the summer months when the water has receded….

Right now, rivers are still high and government workers are trying to keep would-be prospectors away while they get things under control. But in the summer—which experts say could be the busiest since the one that followed major flooding in 1997—stream beds will be exposed for better gold hunting.

“I’m going to have a ball,” one prospector tells the Chico newspaper. The epicenter for the new gold rush could be the Oroville Dam, which nearly catastrophically flooded this winter and required the use of an emergency spillway for the first time…”

“..Oroville – Something was wrong with the Oroville Dam spillway weeks before the Department of Water Resources noticed a hole in the concrete.

Two photos taken by photographers from this newspaper show discoloration and possible damage to the concrete of the spillway at the spot where a gaping hole opened Feb. 7. Those pictures were taken Jan. 13 and Jan. 27.

When asked for a response to the photos, California Natural Resources Agency deputy secretary for communication Nancy Vogel wrote in an email to this newspaper, “Oroville dam was frequently inspected by multiple state and federal agencies. Reports of those inspections did not reveal any major causes for concern. DWR will soon name a panel of independent experts to investigate the cause of the main spillway failure and ascertain if such a failure could occur again. We hope that what we learn about the cause of this incident and how to prevent it elsewhere will help dam owners around the world.”..”

Potentially catastrophic problems with both the primary and emergency spillways at the Oroville Dam appear to have been caused by flaws that either had shown up in inspections or were flagged to state and federal officials going back more than a decade, an expert in infrastructure failures said Monday.

The cratering of the main spillway — which spiraled into the current crisis in Butte County — occurred in a spot where cracks and other defects had been found repeatedly since 2009, said Robert Bea, a professor emeritus and engineering expert at UC Berkeley.

But the defects do not appear to have been adequately repaired or resolved by the state Department of Water Resources, which runs the dam, and the faulty work probably resulted in the fissure that opened up last week on the 1,730-foot-long spillway, Bea said.

“My God, we had evidence that there was trouble going back to 2008, 2009,” said Bea, who at The Chronicle’s request reviewed 14 dam inspections from 2008 to 2016 conducted by the Division of Safety of Dams, which is part of the Department of Water Resources.”

The state Department of Water Resources has, as promised, halted flows down the damaged main spillway at Oroville Dam. Even if you’ve been following the progress of this incident since it began Feb. 7, and even if you understood the damage to the spillway was catastrophic, the first images of the structure are sobering.

DWR stopped the release of water down the spillway early Monday afternoon with two main goals in mind.

First, it wants contractors to begin the task of removing a staggering amount of rubble, rock and sediment that have wound up at the bottom of the river channel below the spillway. Clearing the debris, in turn, will allow dam managers to resume operations at the hydroelectric power plant at the base of the dam, a facility that was shut down as water rose behind the blockage in the channel.
“

-Sunday,February 26th 2017

Oroville Dam’s banged-up spillway to shut down Monday
By Dale Kasler dkasler@sacbee.com February 26, 2017 2:21 PM sacbee.com“As seen from the air and ground level, the gaping hole in the spillway was first photographed by The Bee on Feb. 8, the same day that inspectors were sent via tether down into the hole. Water was released later that same day. Since then, we have documented the erosion caused by the force of water. Produced by Sue Morrow The Sacramento Bee

Oroville Dam operators plan to halt water releases from the dam’s battered spillway Monday in order to ramp up efforts to remove a debris pile that’s preventing them from restarting a hydroelectric plant.

It will mark the first time since Feb. 7, when a giant crater opened in the concrete spillway, that no water has been released from Lake Oroville.

The state Department of Water Resources announced Sunday that with water levels at Lake Oroville reduced to 842 feet, and inflows at a modest 25,000 cubic feet per second, dam operators are confident that shutting off the outflows from the spillway makes sense.

The spillway has been releasing water the past few days at 50,000 cfs. DWR said it will begin dialing back the flows at 6:45 a.m. Monday, bringing the releases to a halt by sometime in the afternoon. DWR said it plans to keep the outflows at zero “for several days.”

Dam operators have been moving in equipment to a water channel beneath the spillway in order to remove the pile of mud, concrete and other debris that’s accumulated since the crater developed Feb. 7. The pile is backing water up into the dam’s hydro plant, making it impossible to restart.

When operational, the hydro plant can release water at 14,000 cfs, “which will allow DWR to better manage reservoir levels through the remaining spring runoff season,” the agency said.

Dam operators shut off the spillway for about a day after the crater was spotted. They resumed outflows, but as a giant storm swelled lake levels, water flowed over the emergency spillway on Feb. 11 for the first time in the reservoir’s 48-year history. A day later, after severe erosion was spotted on the unlined hillside and dam operators feared the emergency spillway would fail, 188,000 downstream residents were evacuated.

By accelerating flows from the damaged main spillway, DWR was able to reduce lake levels, halt the flows over the emergency spillway and arrest the erosion. Since then the lake has fallen to 842 feet – 59 feet below the top of the emergency spillway.

See this amazing photo of the Oroville Dam from space By Michelle Robertson, San Francisco Chronicle Updated 7:53 am, Saturday, February 25, 2017 sfgate.com“…International Space Station crew member Sergey Ryzhikov snapped the above photo of Lake Oroville and the Oroville Dam on February 22. The high water levels and emergency spillway were evident from his perch hundreds of miles above the earth.
..”

Storm-lashed California roads, dams could cost $1B to fix SCOTT SMITH,Associated Press 18 hours ago (Sat. Feb 25th 2017) yahoo.com“….The total cost for responding to flooding, storm damage and repairs statewide in the first two months of 2017 will probably exceed $1 billion, Gov. Jerry Brown’s finance director, Michael Cohen, said Friday. Much of it will be covered by the federal government, which is helping the state recover from severe storms, he said..”

-Friday, February 25th 2017

Water levels at Lake Oroville inching down; US Sen. Kamala Harris tours dam By Andre Byik, Chico Enterprise-Record | PUBLISHED: February 24, 2017 at 11:24 am | UPDATED: February 24, 2017 at 11:46 am mercurynews.com“…As of 4 p.m. Thursday, the water level was at the 850.58-foot elevation, more than 50 feet below the problematic emergency spillway’s lip….
A new storm is scheduled to arrive Saturday night, but the National Weather Service has scaled back its estimate of how strong it will be. It is now expected to bring as much as a quarter-inch of rain on the valley floor and a half-inch in the foothills.

For comparison, according to DWR the Feb. 16-21 storm system dumped 10 inches at Brush Creek, in the foothills above Lake Oroville.
..”

“…In Oroville, where heavy rains recently damaged the reservoir spillway and forced the evacuation of nearly 200,000 people, officials say waters are receding behind the dam, and the reservoir is at 81 percent capacity with room for incoming runoff…”

“..Another potent atmospheric river event has set up in northern California, once again raising the risk of dangerous flooding, landslides and damaging winds in this storm-weary region. Several additional feet of snow will also pile up in the higher terrain of the Sierra Nevada…

Flood warnings continue for all of the Sacramento Valley, including Sacramento, Oroville and Redding. Flooding is likely, due to already-saturated soils and very swollen rivers and lakes….”

First is Ground footage from Friday.
then with fresh Drone footage in the rain from Saturday. (great progress on the emergency spillway repairs)
Finishing with close-up footage of the Main spillway, from 2-19, with reduced waterflow, now at 55,000cfs.
Next is”EXPERTS BELIEVE THE OROVILLE DAM WILL FAIL GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN, from youtube.com“Published on Feb 19, 2017

EXPERTS BELIEVE THE OROVILLE DAM WILL FAIL-GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN

Category
News & Politics
Licen..”
*National Guard was sent to help evacuate people from Oroville to Merced IF dam goes out…Governor spent $ that was supposed to be used for dam repairs on illegal immigrant issue

Viktor Schauberger, “The Water Wizard”, Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list&#8230; Viktor Schauberger has been proved right again and again. He warned the quackademics of this time repeatedly about this kind of disaster and explained to them in great detail how they were doing everything backwards in relationship to moving water. He screamed at the top of his lungs at quackademics for their failed straight channels, straight pipes, straight tubes and flat head thinking! He demonstrated the enormous power of water vortices with decades of research and the building of a Log Flume in Austria which all of the academic quacks claimed would fail. He proved them all wrong as usual!. The very vortices he was teaching about, ate up the spillway, since the water was moved incorrectly down a straight channeled spillway, with flat sides and flat bottoms. The spillway experienced massive cavitation at exactly the point where it would be expected to fail, just below the hump in the spillway where the water was accelerated faster that the slope before it. The cavitation sucked the concrete off the face of the spillway like butter with the enormous vacuum created. The Glenn Canyon Dam, Spillway Disaster of 1983 showed egghead, quakademic engineers the failure of their designs using straight paths for the conduction of water..”

Oroville Dam, atmospheric river
The water level at Lake Oroville continued to drop Thursday, but state officials began reducing the outflow from Oroville Dam’s damaged main spillway in an effort to clear debris from the Feather River below, even as a major storm was forecast for early next week.”

Shieena Living Waters
Published on Feb 15, 2017Oroville Dam: A race to brace spillway for storms arriving tonight By Phillip Reese and Ryan Lillis preese@sacbee.com
sacbee.com “..Crews worked through the night to shore up the emergency spillway at troubled Oroville Dam, racing to fortify the structure before a series of storms arrive Wednesday night.

Three storm systems will hit Northern California during the next six days, according to the National Weather Service. The first system will drop about an inch of rain in Oroville between 10 p.m. Wednesday and 4 p.m. Thursday. Greater amounts of precipitation will fall in the mountains northeast of Lake Oroville.

Forecasters are confident that the first two storm systems will not cause huge inflows into Lake Oroville. They are less confident about the third system, which is due around Tuesday. That storm could be bigger and warmer, meaning more rain and snowmelt streaming into Lake Oroville.

“You’re putting rocks in a hole. Then you’re putting slurry in to solidify it,” said Chris Orrock, spokesman for the Department of Water Resources. “When water comes down, it will hit that patch and roll off.” ..”

OROVILLE, Calif. (AP) — Officials have ordered residents near one of the nation’s biggest dams to evacuate the area, saying a “hazardous situation is developing” after an emergency spillway severely eroded.

State officials are inspecting an erosion scar on the potentially hazardous emergency spillway at the Oroville Dam. Nearly 200,000 people living in the area have been evacuated.

nexpected erosion chewed through the main spillway earlier this week, sending chunks of concrete flying and creating a 200-foot-long, 30-foot-deep hole that continues growing. Engineers don’t know what caused the cave-in, but Chris Orrock, a spokesman for the state Department of Water Resources, said it appears the dam’s main spillway has stopped crumbling even though it’s being used for water releases.

About 150 miles northeast of San Francisco, Lake Oroville is one of California’s largest man-made lakes, and the 770-foot-tall Oroville Dam is the nation’s tallest. The lake is a central piece of California’s government-run water delivery network, supplying water for agriculture in the Central Valley and residents and businesses in Southern California.”Tons Of Rocks Bolster Failing Oroville Dam Spillway
February 13, 2017 9:30 AM sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com“OROVILLE (CBS SF) – A fleet of state and National Guard helicopters were preparing to dump tons of rocks on an eroding spillway at the Oroville Dam Monday, carrying with them the hopes of more than 188,000 evacuees who fled in panic when a collapse appeared to be imminent.

Meanwhile, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said the evacuation order would stay in place until officials were certain the returning residents would be safe.”…

Oroville Dam Spillway Failure: Watch Live Stream Online Published 9:37 pm EST, February 12, 2017 Updated 10:40 pm EST, February 12, 2017 heavy.com“…The Butte County Sheriff’s Department ordered the immediate evacuation of residents in Oroville, California on February 12. Those who live downstream or in low levels by the Oroville Dam were ordered to evacuate Sunday night due to the emergency spillway’s “imminent” failure…”

The California Government assured the citizens that the emergency spillway would not be used in the lake overflow as Oroville Dam’s concrete spillway collapsed due to structural failure at 65,000 CFS release. Now with the lower hydroelectric facility discharge out flow clogged with debris there will be +12,000 CFS flow over top and also authorities will scale back flow from collapsed spillway to 35,000 CFS from 55,000 CFS which means and extra 32,000 CFS will pour over the untested emergency spillway.

THOSE IN THE DRAINAGE BASIN OF THIS DAM NEED TO PREPARE TO POSSIBLY EVACUATE. IF THE ORDER IS GIVEN YOU WILL HAVE LESS THAN 30 MINUTES TO LEAVE. PREPARE NOW.

Water has begun to slowly flow over the Oroville Dam emergency spillway Saturday morning as Lake Oroville has reached full capacity and water outflows by way of the damaged spillway have decreased.

Although inflows decreased Friday and into Saturday morning to 89,000 cubic feet per second, water officials have also decreased outflows to 55,100 cfs, according to KCRA chief meteorologist Mark Finan.

This is the first time the uncontrolled emergency spillway has been used in the dam’s 48-year history.

KCRA-TV
Water officials went back and forth since discovering the erosion hole Tuesday morning on the normal spillway as to whether the lake would reach levels that would allow the emergency spillway to be used.

At noon Friday, California Department of Water Resources officials believed it was less likely that the emergency spillway would be used, based on the amount of water that was being let out in comparison to how much was coming in. But by Friday night, they anticipated it would again need to be used as officials cut back the outflows through the damaged spillway.

Crews began working Wednesday to clear out trees and vegetation below the uncontrolled spillway to reduce the amount of debris that flows into the Feather River.

There are no flood concerns or concerns for the structural integrity of the Oroville Dam.

The total flow of water from the reservoir is expected to be half of what the river can handle and is consistent with releases made at this time of year, the DWR said.

“While DWR does not expect flows to exceed downstream channel carrying capacity,
the rate of flow into the ungated emergency spillway may change quickly,” the department said in a released statement Saturday morning.”

The Oroville Dam in California finds itself in a situation with the only way to avert an over top of the dam is using an untested emergency spill way built in the 1960’s as the regular spillway was damaged by a sinkhole and has stopped drainage of the lake. Evacuations are not issued yet, but with more rain on the way this dam will over top into the emergency earth 1960’s drain way. Good Luck to all of you. You may need to evacuate, Please prepare in Advance.

“…These three graphs show key California reservoir conditions and river stages for the upper and lower Sacramento Valley for Tuesday, February 21, 2017. The images are from the California Department of Water Resources’ Data Exchange Center and the National Weather Service…” Northern California braces for flooding; Don Pedro spillway opened February 20th 2017 @3pm Louis Sahagun and Esmeralda BermudezContact Reporters latimes.com

“….Many parts of the region — especially in the San Joaquin and Sacramento River valleys and Sierra Nevada — are on track to have the wettest winter on record. Numerous reservoirs are close to capacity and streams and rivers are primed for flooding. ..

The area will be under a flood watch Monday and Tuesday, when the new storm is forecast to dump as much as 10 inches of rain on the Feather River Basin. The National Weather Service also warned that the storm is expected to be packing strong winds that could hurl waves in the reservoir toward the 770-foot-tall dam….”2 more Northern California reservoirs at or near capacity
By Nanette Asimov, San Francisco Chronicle Updated 9:35 pm, Friday, February 17, 2017 sfgate.com“..The threat of major flooding in Oroville has subsided, but Northern California’s energetic rains are filling other lakes and reservoirs to capacity.

In Napa County, Lake Berryessa is full but poses no threat of the kind in Oroville last weekend. There, fears of a catastrophic flood from the potential failure of the Oroville Dam spillways sent nearly 200,000 people fleeing.

By contrast, the man-made Lake Berryessa has an unusual overflow mechanism that sends water down a center tube, like a bathtub drain, rather than up and out. That drain hasn’t been called into duty since 2006 — until now, water officials say.

In Stanislaus County, where the Don Pedro Reservoir is forecast to reach capacity by Tuesday, authorities are warning residents along the Tuolumne River 45 miles away in Modesto to consider evacuating voluntarily until the flood danger is past.

“We have a team of deputies going out warning people about localized flooding,” said Lt. Mike Parker of the county Sheriff’s Department, adding that up to 200 people are most at risk.

Officials say they would send water through Don Pedro’s overflow spillway if the lake level hits 830 feet, a height it’s expected to reach in the next several days. ..”

Excess rain water threatens Anderson Reservoir dam in South Bay
KGO – San Francisco 23 hours ago (Saturday, February 11th 2017)yahoo.com“.. Rain has brought too much of a good thing to Santa Clara Valley’s biggest reservoir in Morgan Hill. The Anderson Reservoir is at 91 percent capacity after rain swept through the Bay Area. “

At a news conference, local landowners and Republican and Democratic state legislators cautioned FERC to resist the temptation to compare the advantages of natural gas to coal, and instead compare them to renewable energy, when making its determination about whether the projects are the best way to go to address climate change and energy demand…”

Natural gas study stirs up controversy over Atlantic Coast Pipeline By Caleb Stewart | Posted: Mon 7:12 PM, Sep 12, 2016 whsv.com“…”The fact is, demand for natural gas in Virginia and North Carolina is growing significantly – by 165 percent over the next 20 years,” said Ruby. “Existing pipelines in the region are constrained and operating at full capacity. They are not capable of meeting that huge growth in demand. In Hampton Roads, Virginia, for example, natural gas service is already being curtailed for large industrial customers during high-demand periods because existing pipelines are so constrained. Utilities have looked at expanding that infrastructure for years, and it just isn’t feasible. That’s why we urgently need new infrastructure like the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.”..

In North Carolina, there is currently only one pipeline serving the entire state, and it predominantly serves the western North Carolina.,” said Ruby. “That leaves entire communities in eastern North Carolina with limited or no access to natural gas. Upgrading the existing system or using available capacity, as the authors of this report propose, won’t do anything to expand service in eastern North Carolina. That’s why you need the Atlantic Coast Pipeline – it will actually be located in eastern North Carolina where these communities are located.”

“The reality is, the existing pipelines in our region are constrained and operating at full capacity during those peak demand periods. We need new infrastructure to alleviate those constraints,” said Ruby. “That’s why we’re proposing the Atlantic Coast Pipeline..

—DEPENDENCE ON NATURAL GAS?—

The pipelines, if approved, would provide the mid-Atlantic with natural gas for 80 years, the lifetime of the pipelines. The SELC argues that that would lock the region in to dependence on natural gas.

“An investment of billions of dollars in natural gas will further discourage these utilities from moving towards renewable energy, like solar and wind power that could save their customers more money,” Buppert said.

The two proposed pipelines would transport fracked natural gas from wells in West Virginia to customers in Virginia and the Carolinas. The pipelines would transect natural and recreation areas, along with cities, towns and farms. A number of citizen groups and businesses in several states have formed to oppose the pipelines.

—EXPORTING NATURAL GAS—

The report also raises the possibility of another utility-driven incentive to push for these projects:

“Because the supply of natural gas is abundant, utilities are exploring options to export the fuel overseas. That would require more capacity to move natural gas to the mid-Atlantic’s coastal ports. Therefore, ‘pipeline developers … have an additional motivation to expand their ownership interests in natural gas supply infrastructure,’ the researchers said.”…”

America’s existing pipelines are getting older and more prone to corrosion, and over the next five to 10 years, there will be a significant increase in the number of new pipelines.

And that is creating a huge opportunity for better pipeline safety technology.

Monitoring and detecting corrosion in pipelines is still a crude affair (no pun intended). Pipeline companies tend to underspend on safety, concerned only with meeting the minimum regulatory requirements.

One of the major ways pipeline operators detect corrosion is with a “pig,” a machine that travels down the inside of a pipeline looking for problems.

Pigs are not new — the industry has long relied heavily on them—and the newest generation of pigs, known as “smart pigs,” is considered an improvement over the pigs of yesterday. Smart pigs give a read on the state of the pipeline, such as cracks, corrosion, and metal loss. Operators receive this information in a control room and can then dispatch crews to fix the problem. As of 2012, 93 percent of pipeline inspections were conducted using smart pigs…

So alternative methods to detect trouble spots are needed. One method for detecting corrosion uses a device from outside the pipeline. A series of sensors placed on the outside of the pipeline can search for corrosion without interfering in operations.

Pipeline safety company Fox-Tek, a subsidiary of Augusta Industries (CVE: AAO), uses such a system to detect corrosion, as well as a fiber optic system to detect bends, strains and stress in pipelines.

Did you know that last year 36% of our energy consumption came from petroleum? What petroleum-based items do we use on a daily basis? Sneakers, bubblegum, bath soap and sweaters? These are only a few things made from petroleum. Watch this video and find out more!”

Neutral

Pipelines vs Oil Trains May 26, 2015/0 Comments/in Articles, Data and Analysis, News and Information /by Guest Author fractracker.org By Juliana Henao, Communications InternNatural Gas: Pros and Cons by RP Siegel on Tuesday, Apr 3rd, 2012 triplepundit.comEnbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline Pros and Cons By Scott Steele May 31, 2013 RSS PDF newswire.net“..Looking at the advantages it is certain the pipeline will provide jobs to boost economic growth in communities along the pipeline, provincially and nationally. Enbridge Inc. (NYSE:ENB) (TSE:ENB) notes on its website that the, “Northern Gateway Project will create 550 long-term jobs in B.C., 380 in Alberta and 210 in the rest of Canada for a total of 1150 long term jobs. Also there will be 270 billion in growth to Canada’s GDP over 30 years.”

Pipe fabrication & manufacturing is done according to industry standards and specifications to ensure safe delivery of oil and gas fuels. After the pipe is manufactured it undergoes various testing phases and inspection services including visual inspection, protective coatings inspection, x-ray inspection to name a few.

Pipelines have been proven to be the safest and most reliable mode of transport. According to Canadian Energy Pipeline Association (CEPA), “Our most recent statistics show that 99.99 per cent of liquid products were transported safely between 2002 and 2011.”

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada report that only five pipeline accidents were reported to the TSB in 2011, down from the 2010 total of 11, and below the 2006–2010 average of 9.

Another advantage is the difficulties in handling large amount of products by rail from one loading point is reduced. Findings also show minimum transit loss.

The disadvantages to laying pipelines, including the initial cost of environmental studies, pipeline construction is very expensive. Over time the pipeline could corrode and cause leakage. The Pembina Institute, natural Resources Defense Council and the Living Oceans Society, which issued a joint report on the proposed pipeline in November 2011 stated, “Diluted bitumen may weaken pipelines at a quicker rate than conventional oil because of its acidic, sulphuric, abrasive and viscous nature.”

This is minimized by treatment of the pipe with anti-corrosive coating supplemented with cathodic protection along with increased inspections and pipeline maintenance. New and innovative technologies like digital sensors are being tested, these sensors would help lower the risks of leakage even further.

Pipelines can become damaged by natural disasters or sabotage resulting in contamination of soil and groundwater the costs for clean-up could be astronomical. These occurrences are a lot harder if not impossible to control. Some other disadvantages are slower delivery to a limitation of fixed points.

“Oilfield Directory offers oil and gas company information, recognizing the need for inspection services such as pipe inspection, tank inspection, infrared thermography, calibrations services and more we have oil and gas companies and contractors who are committed to the safety of individuals as well as the environment .” notes a company spokesman for oilfielddirectory.com..”

Anti-Pipeline Views

Oil Pipelines and Spills cla.auburn.edu“..Ponca City, Oklahoma is an example of one of the cities that is being affected by the expansion of the Keystone pipeline. Ponca City is now receiving an increased amount of toxic emissions from tar sand transport. Tar sand is composed of sand, petroleum, and mineral salts; a highly toxic class of chemicals are also added (Tar Sands Blockade). Tar sand produces 17% more greenhouse gases than traditional crude oil (NPR). The air quality has become life threatening, and residents are forced to breathe in dangerous emissions. Children in surrounding the new pipeline are 56% more likely to develop leukemia versus children that live ten miles away. Even though the Keystone XL website states that it will be the “safest pipeline” in North American, shabby construction work has already had to be redone. If a leak does occur once the pipe is built, residents will be at risk of toxic exposure. In every instance of a tar sand leak in populated areas, toxic chemical exposure through respiration has occurred. Toxic chemical exposure can lead to migraines, painful rashes, breathing complications, nausea, chemical sensitivities, and exacerbated cancer activity (Tar Sands Blockade). Tar sand sinks into water, making the cleanup extraordinarily expensive. When tar sand is exposed to air, the harmful chemicals that are added as diluents evaporate into the air forming heavy toxic clouds close to ground level…”‘Pipe Dreams’- The Keystone XL Documentary Narrated by Daryl Hannah

“Published on Mar 24, 2016

This award winning documentary explores the implications of one of today’s most controversial issues – the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. Pipe Dreams is a new 40-minute documentary by Leslie Iwerks on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. It is narrated by Daryl Hannah, who was arrested in Washington, DC at the sit-in protest in front of the White House calling on US President Barack Obama to reject the pipeline.

The Real Impact of the Dakota Access Pipeline By Staff Writer Taylor Veracka ‘18 November 7, 2016 jhupolitik.org“..With all the chaos surrounding the DAPL it’s hard to make out what exactly is the truth and what is not. There are some things that are strikingly clear, however. The Sioux Nation feel that they have been done (yet another) injustice by the US government. They feel their culture and environmental health is at risk, and that they are being taken advantage of. Clearly, many Americans agree. Regardless of the economic benefits of the pipeline, it is important to recognize the problems that the Sioux are facing, and to remember that the majority of the people making political decisions on oil transportation do not completely understand tribal connections to their land. This pipeline represents another opportunity to exploit already endangered and disadvantaged population, and their voices must be considered with the same weight as economic concerns. ..”Map Displays Five Years of Oil Pipeline Spills
by Amanda Starbuck, 6/22/2015 foreffectivegov.org“..Since 2010, over 3,300 incidents of crude oil and liquefied natural gas leaks or ruptures have occurred on U.S. pipelines. These incidents have killed 80 people, injured 389 more, and cost $2.8 billion in damages. They also released toxic, polluting chemicals in local soil, waterways, and air.

Over 1,000 of these incidents occurred on pipelines carrying crude oil. High Country News, a nonprofit news organization in Colorado, mapped these spills:..”

-Texas to Mexico

Inspired by Standing Rock, West Texans take action to fight another pipeline Sasha von Oldershausen The Nation Thu, 08 Dec 2016 12:12 UTC Map sott.net“..Two residents of the 6,000-person city of Alpine were arrested early Tuesday morning on grounds of trespassing after they chained themselves to the entrance gates of a pipeline-construction site owned and operated by Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), the Dallas-based energy company responsible for the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Dozens more stood by, holding electric tea lights and signs denouncing the energy company.

Inspired by the fight against the DAPL near the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, the group was protesting a different ETP pipeline project. The Trans-Pecos Pipeline will cut through the spare and pristine Big Bend region of Texas to the border of Mexico, transporting natural gas into Mexico’s interior. ..

…This week’s victory at Standing Rock, in which the Army Corps of Engineers announced it would not permit the pipeline to be drilled under the Missouri River, underscored the power of direct action. Indigenous organizers and, eventually, thousands of supporters camped on the banks of the Cannonball River to protect their ancestral lands and water source. Their united action, even in the face of police violence, proved that last resorts can work.

“[Standing Rock] in North Dakota has really reinvigorated the whole movement,” said Trans-Pecos Pipeline opponent David Keller, an archeologist who earlier this year watched as ETP pummeled through an ancient Native American site at Trap Spring, whose State Archeological Landmark status was pending at the time.

In fact, the events at Standing Rock have inspired the opposition to rethink their approach entirely. At a recent meeting, during which the opposition clandestinely discussed plans for Tuesday’s action, they talked about shifting the verbiage of their protest to more closely resemble that of the protest in North Dakota. ..

..Others see it as a collective fight. “We’re not piggybacking,” Glover said. “This is one big fight that we have before us and it’s scary but it’s also a wonderful opportunity for us because this is not just about our little space here or their space up in North Dakota. This is about how our water is going to be protected all over America.” ..

..In West Virginia and Virginia, for example, residents concerned about the $3.5 billion Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline have formed an alliance to oppose the project, which they say threatens their underground water supplies. Resistance is also gathering against the Bayou Bridge pipeline, another ETP project, which would snake through 60 miles of Louisiana and Texas. Still, few outside these and other municipalities engaged in local pipeline fights have taken notice….

Opponents of the Trans-Pecos Pipeline are eager to do the same. “Even if we don’t stop it altogether, we’re bringing a lot of awareness to this issue in order to pressure, to get our government to change oil and gas infrastructure regulation,” Glover said. …”

GLOBAL

-Pipeline War or Not?

The Syrian Pipeline War: How Russia Trumped USA Energy War in the Mideast Wed, Sep 21, 2016 | russia-insider.com
There is a crucial hydrocarbon component to the great power contest in and around Syria says F. William Engdahl“..In a fundamental sense the entirety of the five-year-long war over Syria, as well as the entire Arab Spring from Libya to Egypt to Iraq has been about control of hydrocarbon resources—oil and natural gas– and of potential hydrocarbon pipelines to the promising markets of the European Union.

Dick Cheney’s 2001 War on Terror was primarily about providing the excuse for a direct US military takeover of the vast oil fields of Iraq and other key Middle East countries. Washington’s War on Syria has been less a war for control of oil. Rather, it’s about who controls whose natural gas flows via which pipelines through which borders to the vast EU gas market.

At this point it looks more and more as if Russia’s geopolitical and geo-economic strategy is trumping (no Donald pun intended) Washington’s very troubled game in the region. Turkey is apparently deciding to become a key ally in this Russian energy trump…”The Truth About Pipeline Politics in the Syrian Proxy War

“Published on Oct 7, 2015

http://www.undergroundworldnews.com
Oil politics in the Syrian civil war is a complex web of money deception and proxy war. What began as non-violent grassroots rebellion against Bashar al Assad and the Syrian state has morphed into a complex proxy war involving countless factions and alliances competing for control of oil, and territory. Various nation states and world powers who have their own financial interests in the region are supporting the armies on the ground. This is because of Syria’s strategic importance as a potential gatekeeper between oil reserves from the gulf and oil markets in Europe. There are two different proposed pipelines that will have to run through Syria in order for this to happen. One sponsored by the gulf states called the “Qatar-Turkey pipeline” and one sponsored by the Iranians and Syrians nicknamed the “Islamic pipeline”.

Since the 1990s, Europe has been increasingly dependent on Russian natural gas and oil. In 2014 it was estimated that 42% of the European Union’s natural gas imports originated from Russia. This dependence has limited Europe’s ability to make a show of force against Russia. Last year the U.S introduced economic sanctions against Russia in retaliation for its annexation of Crimea. When the US asked the EU to participate, there was a heated debate amongst the European nations about how exactly to impose sanctions. Eastern Europeans felt especially threatened by Russia’s actions and wanted to enact the harshest penalties possible, however, Western Europeans were well aware that cutting off economic trade with Russia would destabilize their economies. As a result the European Union (EU) has desperately been looking for other sources of natural gas. The “pipeline” which will carry natural gas from Azerbaijan into Europe will help to offset dependence on Russian gas, but will take years to reach full capacity and will not rid Europe of Russian dependence altogether. On top of which European demand for natural gas is expected to rise dramatically in the next 30 years. There is only one known source of gas that can solve Europe’s long term energy needs and that’s source resides in the Middle East underneath the Persian Gulf.

THE WAR ON SYRIA: [PIPELINES & THE U.S. DOLLAR ARE KEY. ALSO READ “WHICH PATH TO PERSIA? http://bit.ly/R1qbQp, AND THE VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH US GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: “WE”RE GOING TO TAKE OUT 7 COUNTRIES IN 5 YEARS: IRAQ, SYRIA, LIBYA, SOMALIA, SUDAN & IRAN…” http://youtu.be/tYBc92Jw724

WORLD BANK WHISTLEBLOWER : WHO IS KAREN HUDES?

Karen Hudes studied law at Yale Law School and economics at the University of Amsterdam. She worked in the US Export Import Bank of the US from 1980-1985 and in the Legal Department of the World Bank from 1986-2007. In 2007 Karen warned the US Treasury Department and US Congress that the US would lose its right to appoint the President of the World Bank if the current American President of the World Bank did not play by the rules.

“In July 2011, as the NATO and Gulf states’ destabilization operations against Assad in Syria were in full swing, the governments of Syria, Iran and Iraq signed an historic gas pipeline energy agreement which went largely unnoticed…” “This Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline would be the largest gas pipeline in the Middle East and would span from Iran’s gas-rich South Pars field to the Mediterranean coastline in Lebanon, via Iraq and Syria.

“Syria possesses the largest proved reserves of crude oil in the eastern Mediterranean countries. The Oil & Gas Journal estimated Syria’s proved reserves at 2.5 billion barrels in January 2013, a total larger than all of Syria’s neighbors except for Iraq. The Oil & Gas Journal also reported at the end of 2012 that Syria held proved reserves of 8.5 Tcf of natural gas. This gives Syria the largest conventional hydrocarbon resource base of the countries in this report,… http://www.eia.gov/countries/regions-&#8230;

*Note/Clarification: This is an excerpt from an at-length interview by Greg Hunter. While the interview is not about Syria, Hudes makes mention of Syria as an example of current-day, political theatre. In the original interview, while Hudes is correct regarding the true intent of the demonization/destabilization of Syria (natural gas/pipelines), her facts are reversed. The Saudis offered to purchase $15 billion in Russian arms & to restrict oil output for Russia to maintain their market & price. (Hudes states this info. the other way around.) Original interview: http://youtu.be/gHVgRgYdCsQ&#8221;

-Not a Pipeline War

The War Against the Assad Regime Is Not a ‘Pipeline War’
by Gareth Porter, September 24, 2016 original.antiwar.com“…Even more important, the immediate problem for Qatar’s proposal was not Syria but Saudi Arabia, whose territory the Qatari gas would have to cross to get to Syria. In January 2010, The National, a daily UAE [United Arab Emirates] newspaper reported that the main obstacle to the idea of a pipeline to carry Qatari natural gas to Turkey and then to Europe “was likely to be Saudi Arabia, which has a track record of obstructing regional pipeline development” and still had very bad relations with Qatar. And Middle East geopolitical analyst Felix Imonti reported at Oilprice.com in 2012 that Qatar had been forced to abandon the pipeline idea in 2010 because Saudi Arabia had not agreed to have it built across its territory…

If it’s not a pipeline war, why is the US intervening in Syria? The US decision to support Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia in their ill-conceived plan to overthrow the Assad regime was primarily a function of the primordial interest of the US permanent war state in its regional alliances. The three Sunni allies control US access to the key US military bases in the region, and the Pentagon, the CIA, the State Department and the Obama White House were all concerned, above all, with protecting the existing arrangements for the US military posture in the region.

After all, those military bases are what allow the United States to play at the role of hegemonic power in the Middle East, despite the disasters that have accompanied that role. The degree to which the US determination to preserve its present military profile in the region is illustrated by the case of US-Qatar relations over that tiny monarchy’s arming of extremist Sunni groups in Syria in 2012. The Obama administration was very unhappy with Qatar’s choice of proxies in Syria, and the National Security Council discussed a proposal to pull a squadron of US fighter planes from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar as a way of putting pressure on the government over the issue, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal.

But the US Central Command (CENTCOM), which had moved its headquarters to Al Udeid in 2003, argued that the base was critical to its operations in the region, and that it was about to renegotiate its agreement with Qatar over the use of it. The Pentagon supported CENTCOM’s opposition to any move that would disturb relations with Qatar over the issue and vetoed any such pressure on Qatar. The administration ended up doing nothing about the issue, and in 2013, the US-Qatar Defense Cooperation Agreement originally reached in 2003 was renewed for another ten years.

The massive, direct and immediate power interests of the US war state – not the determination to ensure that a pipeline would carry Qatar’s natural gas to Europe – drove the US policy of participation in the war against the Syrian regime. Only if activists focus on that reality will they be able to unite effectively to oppose not only the Syrian adventure but the war system itself.”

I’m still currently researching on this growing “hot topic” in our nation and planet. Feel free to share any additional resources (e.g. sites) to help argue either side as we call can learn from each other…

Transition to a world without oil
TEDGlobal 2009 · 16:40 · Filmed Jul 2009
22 subtitle languages ted.com“Rob Hopkins reminds us that the oil our world depends on is steadily running out. He proposes a unique solution to this problem — the Transition response, where we prepare ourselves for life without oil and sacrifice our luxuries to build systems and communities that are completely independent of fossil fuels. “>

Fossil Fuels vs. Renewable Energy Resources By Eric McLamb, September 6, 2011 ecology.com“..The sun also provides enough energy that can be stored for use long after the sun sets and even during extended cloudy periods. But making it available is much easier said than done. It would be cost prohibitive to make solar energy mainstream for major world consumption in the near future. The technology is pretty much ready for many business and consumer applications, but it would be way too expensive to replace the current energy infrastructure used for fossil fuel energy. Still, according to the European Photovoltaic Industry Association, solar power could provide energy for more than one billion people by 2020 and 26 percent of global energy needs by 2040…”

Burlington’s switch to renewable energy will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save $20 million over the next 20 years and keep energy prices stable, according to Ken Nolan, manager of power resources for Burlington Electric…”

-Wind

Pros & Cons of Wind Energy windustry.org“In the U.S., the greatest source of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions is the power sector, at about 38%. The largest source of power is coal, which, even though it produces less than 40% of the power, produces over 70% of the power sector’s greenhouse gas emissions. (20% of the greenhouse gas emissions are from natural gas-fired power plants.) Although wind turbines have become familiar in much of the U.S., wind power still (2013) only accounts for about 4% of the power sector.

The potential for wind energy is immense, and experts suggest wind power can easily supply more than 20% of U.S. and world electricity. The advantages and disadvantages of wind energy are detailed here to help you decide what the future of wind should be in the United States.
..”Advantages and Disadvantages of Wind Energy First published June 19th, 2013 by James Bratley. Last updated September 10th, 2016. clean-energy-ideas.com“There are many advantages and disadvantages of wind energy, most of which will be discussed in this article. We’ll take a look at the pros and cons of wind turbines to determine whether the controversy surrounding this clean and renewable energy technology is justified…”EES-4 Understanding Why Wind and Ground Solar Energy Cannot Replace Fossil Fuels

http://facebook.com/ScienceReason … In 1979, Jimmy Carter, in a visionary move, installed solar panels on the roof of the White House. This symbolic installation was taken down in 1986 during the Reagan presidency. In 1991, Unity College, an environmentally-minded centre of learning in Maine acquired the panels and later installed them on their cafeteria roof.

In “A Road not Taken”, Swiss artists Christina Hemauer and Roman Keller travel back in time and, following the route the solar panels took, interview those involved in the decisions regarding these panels as well as those involved in the oil crisis of the time. They also look closely at the way this initial installation presaged our own era.

How Green Are Those Solar Panels, Really? By Christina Nunez, National Geographic PUBLISHED November 11, 2014 news.nationalgeographic.com
As the industry grows, so does concern over the environmental impact.“..Fabricating the panels requires caustic chemicals such as sodium hydroxide and hydrofluoric acid, and the process uses water as well as electricity, the production of which emits greenhouse gases. It also creates waste. These problems could undercut solar’s ability to fight climate change and reduce environmental toxics…

Right now, solar panel recycling suffers from a chicken-or-egg problem: There aren’t enough places to recycle old solar panels, and there aren’t enough defunct solar panels to make recycling them economically attractive….

The silicon used to make the vast majority of today’s photovoltaic cells is abundant, but a “silicon-based solar cell requires a lot of energy input in its manufacturing process,” said Northwestern’s You. The source of that energy, which is often coal, he added, determines how large the cell’s carbon footprint is…”

The French government has announced plans to install solar panels on 621 miles of road over the next five years as part of the “Positive Energy” initiative. The goal of the project is to supply electricity to 5 million people, or about 8 percent of the country. The “Wattway” photovoltaic solar panels that will be used in the project were jointly developed by the French road construction company Colas and the National Institute for Solar Energy and were unveiled last October. We look at the major step forward for green energy on the Lip News with Jo Ankier and Elliot Hill.

..”Solar Road Panels Offer Asphalt Alternative By Sören Harder .spiegel.de“..The idea is as simple as it is ingenious. Wherever roads are laid, solar panels could go instead. They would generate electricity, which would in turn be fed into the grid. Thus, oil is conserved twice: Electric cars could be charged with the energy produced by the panels, and the panels would replace the use of asphalt, the production of which requires petroleum…
The Brusaws’ work was impressive enough that this spring, they are launching a pilot project, for which the state awarded them $750,000. In their hometown of Sandpoint, Idaho, near the Canadian border, the couple has built their first parking lot made from solar panels…
There’s just one catch: Currently the solar road panels cost about three times as much as conventional roads, the Brusaws say. But over time, they add, the technology could begin to actually turn a profit. It sounds almost too good to be true. “First AMAZING Solar Roadway UNVEILED!

“Published on Oct 11, 2016

The words failure of epic proportion are thrown around a lot these days….. however Solar Roadways grand unveiling may have just raised the bar on what that actually means.

We were promised roads that would generate power, be computer controlled, modular, replaceable, with programmable lights that would function as road markings that would be visible during the day.

What was delivered was a ‘road’ that couldnt be driven
DIDNT GENERATE ANY POWER
had LED lights on that just cycled
LED that were not visible even when the STREET LIGHTS WERE STILL ON, let alone in full daylight!
and of course 75% of them died within a week of instillation.

You would have thought such a failure to achieve anything would have dampened their bold claims…. but not at all, they are now claiming the road will recharge your electric car while you are actually driving……sigh…. and they STILL get wall to wall favorable media coverage!

Solar Roadways make them a lot more expensive — 10 to 40 times more expensive depending on assumptions — and in theory create the ability to avoid some costs and make some other costs more viable, but a lot of the additional value seems pretty flimsy. They will be unable to overcome this massive cost increase through generating electricity.

For example, they want to replace painting road markings — which would degrade the light hitting the solar panels — with LED road markings. Well, this just adds a lot of cost and heat, won’t necessarily be particularly visible during the day and will put LEDs and their wiring between the panels and the sunlight too. Ditto magically moving lane markings allowing shifts in traffic patterns will likewise be an expensive technical solution to some paint which needs to be restored every year or two and maybe some overhead signage…

So what’s the problem with snowplows? Well, they have heavy metal blades that scrape across the road. And the road in this case is a bumpy glass surface, because a slick surface would become a sheet of ice in the rain, so it needs to be textured. And the snowplow blade is going to be blasting across these bumps at 30-50 miles per hour scraping them off and shattering them. Oh, and leaving a lot of snow packed into the cracks between the bumps, degrading the effectiveness yet again. Salt, gravel and other substances will likely be required as well, which is fun when you have a bunch of glass panels with cracks between them allowing salty water in among the solar panels, LEDs, wires and heating coils…”U.S.’s First Public Solar Road Will Roll Out On Route 66 by Barbara Eldredge@barbaraeldredge Jun 21, 2016, 9:35am EDT curbed.com

Solar streets are finally having their moment in the sun“..Missouri’s transportation department is set to launch their own crowdfunding campaign to support their energy experiment, and expects the hexagonal solar panels to be fully installed and operational by the end of the year…”

Solar energy is our best hope, but the development of said technology over the past few decades has been lackluster. How long before solar energy lives up to its promises? What’s taking so long? Will the energy revolution arrive in time?…

Advantages and Disadvantages Of Biomass Energy conserve-energy-future.com“..Now these biomass fuel products are harvested and mass-produced and used in everything from engines to power plants. … Carbon dioxide released by fossil fuel are released into the atmosphere and are harmful to the environment. 3. Abundant and Renewable: Biomass products are abundant and renewable…”

Wyoming proposal would require utilities to use fossil fuels
Mead Gruver, Associated Press Wed, Jan 25 2:36 PM PST yahoo.com“..The legislators’ push to punish renewable energy use “clearly picks a preferred energy source regardless of cost. This may not only cost ratepayers and consumers in Wyoming, but it could harm our potential to attract new industry,” Godby said.

The bill would penalize utility-scale solar and wind because those producers are less able to respond quickly to fluctuating demand for power. Natural gas power plants can fire up quickly when millions of people turn on their air conditioners during a heat wave.

But the wind does not blow all the time and solar energy installations cannot produce electricity at night, making them less versatile than fossil fuels that can be burned whenever electricity is needed…”

Renewable energy has been both praised and derided as an alternative source of power over the past two decades. To its detractors it is inefficient, unreliable and economically unsound. To its advocates it is free, clean, and unlimited in its potential. With global reliance on dwindling oil reserves an international political priority, attention continues to focus on renewable energy and its applications…”

“..change our energy behavior of energy consumption..increase efficiency in one end and other save…increase renewable energy”

Other Countries

History Channel Modern Marvel: WWI Chemical Warfar..”
Comments:“fritz haber was indeed a jew , ironicly enough he invented zyklone A the later renewed to zyklone B wich was used to murder in the gaschambers ﻿..”Fritz Haber, chemheritage.org“…Haber was from a well-to-do German-Jewish family involved in various manufacturing enterprises. He studied at several German universities, earning a doctorate in organic chemistry in 1891. After a few years of moving from job to job, he settled into the Department of Chemical and Fuel Technology at the Polytechnic in Karlsruhe, Germany, where he mastered the new subject of physical chemistry. His research in physical chemistry eventually led to the Haber-Bosch process. In 1911 he was invited to become director of the Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry at the new Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft in Berlin, where academic scientists, government, and industry cooperated to promote original research.

The Haber-Bosch process is generally credited with keeping Germany supplied with fertilizers and munitions during World War I, after the British naval blockade cut off supplies of nitrates from Chile. During the war Haber threw his energies and those of his institute into further support for the German side. He developed a new weapon—poison gas, the first example of which was chlorine gas—and supervised its initial deployment on the Western Front at Ypres, Belgium, in 1915. His promotion of this frightening weapon precipitated the suicide of his wife, who was herself a chemist, and many others condemned him for his wartime role. There was great consternation when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for 1918 for the synthesis of ammonia from its elements.

After World War I, Haber was remarkably successful in building up his institute, but in 1933 the anti-Jewish decrees of the Nazi regime made his position untenable. He retired a broken man, although at the time of his death he was on his way to investigate a possible senior research position at Rehovot in Palestine (now Israel)…”

U.S. & Allies

A very brief history of the U.S. use of chemical weapons worldbulletin.net“…After the Baath regime in Syria had allegedly used chemical weapons against the civilian population in the suburbs of Damascus, the US decision makers accused the Syrian government of breaking an international agreement reached at the end of WW I. According to this agreement, chemical weapons are not permitted to be employed in any sort of military conflict. From the way the US leadership speaks, someone who is not familiar with world affairs may think that chemical weapons have not been used in wars from the end of WW I until the attacks of the Baath regime on August 21, 2013. Contrary to the image the US political leadership has been presenting recently, from WW II to today, the US has the lead in the world in the development, production and deployment of chemical weapons on both military forces and civilian populations at home and across the world…”10 Chemical Weapons Attacks Washington Doesn’t Want You to Talk About
Wesley Messamore’s avatar image By Wesley Messamore September 04, 2013 mic.com“…Washington doesn’t merely lack the legal authority for a military intervention in Syria. It lacks the moral authority. We’re talking about a government with a history of using chemical weapons against innocent people far more prolific and deadly than the mere accusations Assad faces from a trigger-happy Western military-industrial complex, bent on stifling further investigation before striking.

Here is a list of 10 chemical weapons attacks carried out by the U.S. government or its allies against civilians.
1. The U.S. Military Dumped 20 Million Gallons of Chemicals on Vietnam from 1962 – 1971

During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military sprayed 20 million gallons of chemicals, including the very toxic Agent Orange, on the forests and farmlands of Vietnam and neighboring countries, deliberately destroying food supplies, shattering the jungle ecology, and ravaging the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Vietnam estimates that as a result of the decade-long chemical attack, 400,000 people were killed or maimed, 500,000 babies have been born with birth defects, and 2 million have suffered from cancer or other illnesses. In 2012, the Red Cross estimated that one million people in Vietnam have disabilities or health problems related to Agent Orange.
2. Israel Attacked Palestinian Civilians with White Phosphorus in 2008 – 2009

White phosphorus is a horrific incendiary chemical weapon that melts human flesh right down to the bone.

In 2009, multiple human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and International Red Cross reported that the Israeli government was attacking civilians in their own country with chemical weapons. An Amnesty International team claimed to find “indisputable evidence of the widespread use of white phosphorus” as a weapon in densely-populated civilian areas. The Israeli military denied the allegations at first, but eventually admitted they were true.

After the string of allegations by these NGOs, the Israeli military even hit a UN headquarters(!) in Gaza with a chemical attack. How do you think all this evidence compares to the case against Syria? Why didn’t Obama try to bomb Israel?
3. Washington Attacked Iraqi Civilians with White Phosphorus in 2004

In 2004, journalists embedded with the U.S. military in Iraq began reporting the use of white phosphorus in Fallujah against Iraqi insurgents. First the military lied and said that it was only using white phosphorus to create smokescreens or illuminate targets. Then it admitted to using the volatile chemical as an incendiary weapon. At the time, Italian television broadcaster RAI aired a documentary entitled, “Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre,” including grim video footage and photographs, as well as eyewitness interviews with Fallujah residents and U.S. soldiers revealing how the U.S. government indiscriminately rained white chemical fire down on the Iraqi city and melted women and children to death.
4. The CIA Helped Saddam Hussein Massacre Iranians and Kurds with Chemical Weapons in 1988

CIA records now prove that Washington knew Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons (including sarin, nerve gas, and mustard gas) in the Iran-Iraq War, yet continued to pour intelligence into the hands of the Iraqi military, informing Hussein of Iranian troop movements while knowing that he would be using the information to launch chemical attacks. At one point in early 1988, Washington warned Hussein of an Iranian troop movement that would have ended the war in a decisive defeat for the Iraqi government. By March an emboldened Hussein with new friends in Washington struck a Kurdish village occupied by Iranian troops with multiple chemical agents, killing as many as 5,000 people and injuring as many as 10,000 more, most of them civilians. Thousands more died in the following years from complications, diseases, and birth defects.
5. The Army Tested Chemicals on Residents of Poor, Black St. Louis Neighborhoods in The 1950s

In the early 1950s, the Army set up motorized blowers on top of residential high-rises in low-income, mostly black St. Louis neighborhoods, including areas where as much as 70% of the residents were children under 12. The government told residents that it was experimenting with a smokescreen to protect the city from Russian attacks, but it was actually pumping the air full of hundreds of pounds of finely powdered zinc cadmium sulfide. The government admits that there was a second ingredient in the chemical powder, but whether or not that ingredient was radioactive remains classified. Of course it does. Since the tests, an alarming number of the area’s residents have developed cancer. In 1955, Doris Spates was born in one of the buildings the Army used to fill the air with chemicals from 1953 – 1954. Her father died inexplicably that same year, she has seen four siblings die from cancer, and Doris herself is a survivor of cervical cancer.
6. Police Fired Tear Gas at Occupy Protesters in 2011

The savage violence of the police against Occupy protesters in 2011 was well documented, and included the use of tear gas and other chemical irritants. Tear gas is prohibited for use against enemy soldiers in battle by the Chemical Weapons Convention. Can’t police give civilian protesters in Oakland, California the same courtesy and protection that international law requires for enemy soldiers on a battlefield?
7. The FBI Attacked Men, Women, and Children With Tear Gas in Waco in 1993

At the infamous Waco siege of a peaceful community of Seventh Day Adventists, the FBI pumped tear gas into buildings knowing that women, children, and babies were inside. The tear gas was highly flammable and ignited, engulfing the buildings in flames and killing 49 men and women, and 27 children, including babies and toddlers. Remember, attacking an armed enemy soldier on a battlefield with tear gas is a war crime. What kind of crime is attacking a baby with tear gas?
8. The U.S. Military Littered Iraq with Toxic Depleted Uranium in 2003

In Iraq, the U.S. military has littered the environment with thousands of tons of munitions made from depleted uranium, a toxic and radioactive nuclear waste product. As a result, more than half of babies born in Fallujah from 2007 – 2010 were born with birth defects. Some of these defects have never been seen before outside of textbooks with photos of babies born near nuclear tests in the Pacific. Cancer and infant mortality have also seen a dramatic rise in Iraq. According to Christopher Busby, the Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, “These are weapons which have absolutely destroyed the genetic integrity of the population of Iraq.” After authoring two of four reports published in 2012 on the health crisis in Iraq, Busby described Fallujah as having, “the highest rate of genetic damage in any population ever studied.”
9. The U.S. Military Killed Hundreds of Thousands of Japanese Civilians with Napalm from 1944 – 1945

Napalm is a sticky and highly flammable gel which has been used as a weapon of terror by the U.S. military. In 1980, the UN declared the use of napalm on swaths of civilian population a war crime. That’s exactly what the U.S. military did in World War II, dropping enough napalm in one bombing raid on Tokyo to burn 100,000 people to death, injure a million more, and leave a million without homes in the single deadliest air raid of World War II.
10. The U.S. Government Dropped Nuclear Bombs on Two Japanese Cities in 1945

Although nuclear bombs may not be considered chemical weapons, I believe we can agree they belong to the same category. They certainly disperse an awful lot of deadly radioactive chemicals. They are every bit as horrifying as chemical weapons if not more, and by their very nature, suitable for only one purpose: wiping out an entire city full of civilians. It seems odd that the only regime to ever use one of these weapons of terror on other human beings has busied itself with the pretense of keeping the world safe from dangerous weapons in the hands of dangerous governments…”

“..The United States biological weapons program officially began in spring 1943 on orders from U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. Research continued following World War II as the U.S. built up a large stockpile of biological agents and weapons. Over the course of its 27 year history, the program weaponized and stockpiled the following seven bio-agents (and pursued basic research on many more): Bacillus anthracis (anthrax) Francisella tularensis (tularemia) Brucella spp (brucellosis) Coxiella burnetii (Q-fever) Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEE) Botulinum toxin (botulism) Staphylococcal enterotoxin B

Throughout its history, the U.S. bioweapons program was secret. It became controversial when it was later revealed that laboratory and field testing (some of the latter using simulants on non-consenting individuals) had been common. The official policy of the United States was first to deter the use of bio-weapons against U.S. forces and secondarily to retaliate if deterrence failed. There exists no evidence that the U.S. ever used biological agents against an enemy in the field (see below for alleged uses).

In 1969, President Richard Nixon ended all offensive (i.e., non-defensive) aspects of the U.S. bio-weapons program. In 1975 the U.S. ratified both the 1925 Geneva Protocol and the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC)—international treaties outlawing biological warfare. Recent U.S. biodefense programs, however, have raised concerns that the U.S. may be pursuing research that is outlawed by the BWC…”

Why the U.S. military exposed minority soldiers to toxic mustard gas
June 22, 2015 at 6:20 PM EST pbs.org“..The U.S. government conducted experiments with mustard gas and other chemicals on some U.S. troops at the time. That chapter of history was first revealed in the early ’90s. Now a new investigation by NPR finds the military used race-based experiments as part of those tests. African-American men, shown here in protective gear, as well as Japanese-American and Puerto Rican soldiers, were singled out.

These pictures show the forearms of men exposed to mustard gas and other agents. Some, like Rollins Edwards, are living with the effects decades later, including injuries to their skin.

Caitlin Dickerson led NPR’s investigation. And Susan Smith is a professor of history at the University of Alberta, Canada. She has studied and written extensively about this…”

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*vaccinations were found to have caused cancer in soldiers in 1962 and didn’t know about it until 3 years later in 1965.
*see Neutral Perspective: Vaccinations are safe and NOT? goodnewseverybodycom.wordpress.com